


Another One For The Fire

by Kiki023



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Cowboys & Cowgirls, F/M, Gen, Nature, Wild West, philosophizing in the desert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 19:18:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiki023/pseuds/Kiki023
Summary: After the dead have died the living must go on living.





	Another One For The Fire

Dusted boots thudded across a desert landscape. In the unflinching heat of the sun’s gaze a cowboy, decked in faded denim trousers and a torn tartan shirt, dragged his feet through dirt and rock. In the distance, a vulture flew swiftly across blue seas of sky, soaring across a grand arc that dipped and rose in one smooth streak of flight. The cowboy paused to take a breath, warm air filling his lungs. His shirt was damp and stuck to his chest and the sun beat painfully upon the side of his face. He leaned against the side of a large rock that itself rested upon the edge of a stony hillock that molded with other mounds of rock that extended far off to his right. The cowboy watched the vulture sweep across the sky and its jet-black plumage stood in stark contrast to the wisps of cirrus cloud that hung in the sky like props suspended above a stage. It tore through the sultry air, its elevation dipping until it seemed almost absorbed into the line of the horizon that shimmered and morphed into dry earth. The cowboy huffed and pressed on towards that spectral visage far in the distance, his hat low on his face. Dirt turned to sand and the rocky beacons that had marked his path passed him by until it seemed that he himself had been swallowed up into an abyss of endless sand. He thought of nothing, felt nothing but the heat on his back and the sweat that dripped and clung to him. It was a long while before he was forced to stop again, halting before a dried well rooted firmly in the desert ground. He became aware of his thirst and peered down into the depths of the well. There was water far below but he could not reach it, the bucket that would act as receptacle having been torn from the rope attached to the top of the well. He heaved a long sigh and sat down against it. He did not move. He waited. 

It was not until the sun had begun to lower itself below the dividing line of the sky that he saw the first hazy image begin to manifest itself in the distance. The cowboy squinted, attempting to clear his tired vision and see beyond the blinding light amplified by the white-hot sand that acted as its own willing receiver. Gradually the shapes in the distance acquired form and boundaries. It was a wagon, dragged dutifully by a single brown horse and upon this wagon sat two men. The cowboy tensed as they neared him, his fingers clenching into fists. Weakened by his exhaustion and the thirst that clawed at the back of his throat he found that the strength he had once been able to summon almost at will had now left him defenseless and alone. He waited with bated breath as the wagon turned and came to halt before him. 

One of the men leaned down and examined him closely. He wore a light white shirt that ended at his elbows and upon his head rested peculiarly large glasses. “How do?” he asked and broke into a wide smile. 

The cowboy did not respond, merely drinking in the appearance of the smiling man and the large wooden wagon that had appeared so suddenly as if by some divine machination. The cowboy stared at the man. 

“Can ye talk?” the smiling man asked again. “Are you mute?” 

The cowboy opened his mouth to speak but no sound reached past his throat. He swallowed and tried again. “Who are you?” he asked. 

The smile on the wagon man grew even wider and he slapped his knee and laughed. “So you can speak! Say, what’s your name mister?” 

The cowboy stared and the wagon man reversed himself, seeming to tumble over the words that poured from his mouth. “Right, right, my apologies. My name’s Jasper. Jasper Jordan. This here’s Monty Green,” he motioned to the smaller man seated beside him, “we’re out from Arkadia. Ye been there? You look like the usual esteemed inhabitant.” 

The cowboy said nothing.

“Right, anyway, we been out lookin’ for silver. Ye know about that, don’t you? That why ye out here? I’ll tell ye, those mines out there been scoured to shit. Ain’t a thing left out there.” 

“You’re scavengers,” the cowboy said, noticing for the first time bags piled high behind the two men. 

“We prefer collectors, if ye don’t mind,” Jasper smiled. “Now what’s a fella such as yourself doing all the way out here? Mighty far from Arkadia.” 

The cowboy shrugged. He looked past them at the desert floor that stretched far beyond them. He shook his head slowly, as if upon it balanced a great weight. 

Jasper was quiet for a moment, looking down upon the cowboy like one looks at a circus curiosity. Then his eyes brightened and his jovial intonation were carried by the whispering wind of the desert. “Say, why don’t ye come ride with us? We’re headed back into town now.”

“Jasper,” his companion cautioned. 

“Aw, it’s alright,” Jasper brushed him aside, “ain’t it – uh, what didya say yer name was?” 

The cowboy ignored him, gathering himself up and standing pointedly beside the wagon until Jasper made way for him. The cowboy clambered atop the wagon and sat stock still beside Jasper as he took the reins of the horse and lashed them forward. The horse strained under the added weight but soon found its rhythm and the three of them were traveling across the desert. 

“It’s a good thing we found ye when we did, otherwise ye mighta been…” Jasper made a cutthroat motion with his fingers. The cowboy stared ahead and said nothing. 

Jasper fell into a kind of entranced silence as he focused upon the horse and the path they took through the desert. There were no landmarks, no beacons of manmade artificiality, no structure but far-away scarlet plateaus and monadnocks risen powerfully under nature’s watchful protection. The three of them did not speak to one another, the cowboy sat tensed in his seat, his leg brushed by the occasional and erratic jerking of Jasper’s own. The other, Monty, sat almost as still as he, guardedly watching the surrounding scenery as if expecting a native army to spring out and ambush them. Time passed and the cowboy found himself beginning to doze. He willed himself to alertness. The possibility of a trap had not left his mind entirely. Sand was passed and clouds dissipated and the sun completed its journey below the horizon and the first of distant suns had begun to twinkle in the twilight when the cowboy spotted the lights of Arkadia below the high vantage point they occupied. Together they descended into the town. A single wide dirt road bisected Arkadia. To his right the cowboy took in the sight of the post office, a hotel, and a saloon; on the left stood a smithy that contained a blacksmith’s forge, a stable for horses, the sheriff’s office, and a collection of tents positioned in a grassy field on the far edge of town. The wagon creaked and the horse neighed as they passed the fast fading signpost stuck squarely into the dirt before the town that announced their entry. In blotched white paint it read: Arkadia.  


The wagon came to a halt in front of the saloon and for a moment all was still in the dusk of town. Then Jasper dropped the reigns and hooted merrily, rising up and stretching his arms behind his head. “It’s good to be back,” he let out an exaggerated yawn and stepped over Monty, who leaned back in annoyance as Jasper pushed his way over the side of the wagon. “I could do with a drink,” Jasper eyed the others and pointed at the two occupants of the wagon. “Looks like we all could.” 

Monty sighed and stepped out of the wagon, taking one of the reigns and pulling the horse towards the stable. “We can start unloading this stuff tomorrow,” he said, nodding his head towards the bags in the wagon that swayed to the movements of the horse. Jasper gave a short nod in the affirmative, “Leave the wagon somewhere no one will see.” Monty gave no indication of having heard and moved across the road to the stable. The cowboy turned away from them and made his way towards the hotel, whose lantern lights shone brightly out of tarped windows and the open doorway, giving life to a kaleidoscope of moving shapes and dancing shadows that spilled into the rapidly darkening streets. He felt an arm wrap around his shoulder before he could make it to the wooden stairs that marked the entrance. 

“Whaddya say ye ‘n I get a drink?” The cowboy looked deep into the soulful gaze of Jasper Jordan, whose wide eyes, upturned lips and unperturbed expression betrayed no hint of malice. He said nothing as Jasper turned them and led him back towards the saloon. “Don’t worry,” he said, “People around here don’t mind newcomers.” The cowboy grit his teeth as he was led through the entrance of the saloon and into a wide barroom, dimly lit by the occasional lantern hung along the walls. The room was divided into the bar at which sat patrons nursing their drinks and a larger space comprised of tables, some of which were pushed to the walls and others positioned on the center floor. The saloon was fairly crowded, the tables filled to capacity and the bar leaving nary a space for the enterprising initiate. Jasper guided them to the bar, squeezing in between disgruntled regulars who grumbled and grunted as the two men took their places atop their respective stools. Jasper waved to someone down the bar but the cowboy stared ahead, unwilling and unseeing. A continuous hum of conversation filled the room and wafted over the bar, enveloping them in the comfortable sound of their fellow man and his unceasing disposition towards the spoken word. A voice sounded from down the bar. 

“Jasper! I thought you weren’t getting back until tomorrow.” 

“I know it, but we struck nothing but sand out there. It’s all dried up.” 

A woman came to them from behind the bar, leaning across the wooden divider and staring first at Jasper, then the cowboy. Her black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin jolted something within the cowboy and he pulled himself away, returning his gaze to the row of drinks placed proudly behind the bar. 

“Who’s your friend here?” she nodded towards the cowboy. 

“Monty ‘n me found him in the desert sittin’ all by his lonesome. Didn’t have the heart to leave him out there.” 

“Huh,” she slid in front of the cowboy so that he could do nothing but return her stare. “What’s your name?” 

The cowboy did not answer. The woman looked at him for a few moments before smiling. “Man of few words, huh?” she asked. He shrugged and she laughed. “Get you a drink?” she asked. The man motioned towards the whisky and she began pouring the liquor into a glass. 

“Save some of that for me, Raven. Been dyin’ for a drink,” Jasper called. 

“You’re always dying for a drink,” Raven responded before sliding the glass to the cowboy. “This one’s on the house,” she winked.

“Hey! That’s not fair,” Jasper protested. “I found him.” 

“Shhh,” Raven soothed, sliding another glass to Jasper. “Drink up boys.” 

The cowboy raised the glass and felt the coolness of drink touch his lips. He sighed and downed the glass in a straight shot. He pushed the glass to Raven. 

“Another.” 

“This one’s gonna cost you,” she warned. He nodded and she poured. 

“Where is everyone?” he heard Jasper ask. “Ain’t they usually around this time?” 

The cowboy tuned out. The dull hum of conversation becoming a swirling mass of white noise that filtered through his ears, incapable of penetrating the barrier of his consciousness. He took another swig and downed his glass. The liquid burned his throat and though in him there lingered a desire for the refreshing texture of cool water he found a ferocity growing within him that demanded more drink. His hand began to shake and he gripped the glass with fingers that tightened until they were white. He swallowed heavily and rubbed his other hand over the top of the bar, feeling displaced wood shavings tickle his palm. He remained seated on that stool, gripping his glass and running his hand over the bar-top until finally he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head to Jasper, who stood beside him and gestured wildly at something on the other side of the room. It took him a moment to realize the boy was speaking. 

“ – you to some friends?” 

“What?”

“I said can I introduce you to some friends?” 

“Why?” 

Jasper gave him a puzzled look. “Why what?” 

“Why would I want you to do that?” 

Jasper nodded and leaned in close, as if he were sharing some profound secret that only he was privy to. “You, my desert wandering friend, are an object of interest.” 

“A what?” 

“You’re curious, that’s all. C’mon! I said I’d come back with somethin’ good and you’re all I got.” 

The cowboy considered this. “Buy me a drink.” 

“Huh?”

“Buy me a drink and I’ll go meet your friends.” 

Jasper broke out into a wide smile. “Alright! Alright!” he called to Raven. “Pour this here man a drink! On me!” he bellowed and Raven simply smiled and poured another whisky. After he had sucked the last drop out of the glass he turned towards Jasper who directed him to a collection of tables pushed together at the back of the saloon. Around it was gathered an assortment of individuals – too many for him to get a proper grasp on and for a moment he felt something foreign fluttering in his chest, a testament to what remained of a time long ago and far beyond the annals of immediate memory. Jasper pushed him into a seat at the head of the table and he sat facing the group that now examined him as if he were a shipwrecked castaway washed up on some foreign shore. A man with a healthy head of brown hair that dropped down to his ears and even further down his neck, a colored man who glanced at him above the rim of his drink with suspect eyes, a girl with dirty blonde hair and a thin face and another girl whose face he lingered on, blonde with an exotic hint of red coloring the tips of her curved and almost frizzled hair, a film of blue iris that surrounded pupils staring into his own and he looked away from their expectant expressions, his chest constricting and the sweat beginning to play out on his face. 

“Who’s your friend?” the man with brown haired asked Jasper, a smirk resting on his face. 

“Found him in the desert,” Jasper said, pulling a chair up to the table. “He doesn’t talk much,” he turned to the cowboy and began to list names, pointing as he did so. Finn. Wells. Harper. Clarke. He looked at them all and gave an imperceptible nod as his eyes met their own. He could see out of the corner of his vision that Clarke did not turn from him as the others did and did not return to her drink as they. He lifted his eyes to meet her own. She smiled at him. 

"What’s your name?” she asked. 

“Bellamy.” 

Jasper looked at him in surprise. “Bellamy,” he tasted the name on his tongue. “What’s that? Mexican?” 

Bellamy huffed and stared hard at the tabletop, as if he could poke holes with the sheer force of his staring. 

“What are you doing out here, Bellamy?” Clarke asked. 

Bellamy took his time before responding, carefully weighing the possible outcomes of each response. “Dunno,” he shrugged.

“C’mon,” Finn spoke up, placing his now emptied glass down upon the table. “You’ve got to give us more than that.”

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Bellamy said, his voice hardened and firm and the light and easy atmosphere that hung around them soured. Clarke kept her eyes trained on him and he could feel her watching and he shifted under the attention until she finally looked away. The talk amongst the table continued for a long while and nobody bothered him. He sat in the slowly dying hum of the saloon until it was only they and the bartender who remained. Raven hopped over the bar and came to them bearing drink. She set down a glass of scotch upon the table and looked at Bellamy.

“You drink this?” she questioned.

“Anything,” he replied and she grinned. 

Bellamy watched them clink their glasses together and pour the liquor down their throats. He touched the glass to his lips and sipped at the drink. His appetite for intoxication had lessened considerably despite the in-group discussion that had somehow imposed itself upon him. He felt a deep tiredness setting upon him, settling into his bones and weighing down on his eyelids. He fought to stay awake and knew he would not last much longer. The hour grew late and he grew more tired until no longer could he stand it despite the seemingly limitless supply of energy the group at the table seemed capable of expending. He backed away from the table and stood up and the rest of them turned their eyes to him. He faltered for a moment, his eyes sweeping across the table at them all. He avoided Clarke. 

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be going now.” 

A chorus of voices rose in opposition. 

“We’re just getting started!”

“You sure, man?” 

“Have one more drink.” 

He was stunned at their determination to keep him. His eyes found Clarke and he saw her smile widen in the dimness of the saloon but he turned away and said to the others, “I thank  
you. But it’s time for me to retire.” They let him go without further protest and he stepped out into the coolness of the twinkling air. The lights of the saloon and the hotel had dimmed and the shadows that had once roamed freely across the dusty street of Arkadia were reduced to dying embers like coals sizzling atop a fire. He stepped off the wooden stairs and found himself alone in the street. He moved towards the hotel, feeling around in his ripped pockets for the rusted coins he had made a point to secure snugly within. He groaned in frustration when his hand met nothing but denim and lint. Bellamy paused before the entrance to the hotel and looked helplessly about him. It would be another night in the sand. 

A shuffling came out of the night. A shadowed figure emerging from the alley between the saloon and the hotel, stumbling and slipping in the dust. A muted wheezing, like a long and low snore came from the apparition now making its determined way to him. Bellamy ground his boots into the dust and prepared to make contact. The figure halted, swaying on its feet, and Bellamy could see that it was a man, having caught a streak of light emanating from the hotel window. The man was caked in dirt and a thick strand of hair fell over his right eye, he had a prominent nose and his lips moved though no sound emerged from his straining throat. Bellamy backed away and the man swung forward, almost toppling on his front. His hands found and gripped Bellamy’s shirt and he could smell the alcohol on the man’s face. 

“nnnbydrin’?” the man slurred and stumbled forward, pushing Bellamy back so that he was forced to prop the man up. 

“Buy me a drink,” the man managed to splutter and Bellamy shoved him away so that he fell on his hindquarters, sand kicking up and spreading around him. The man began to pat the ground and pull his legs in, before kicking them out again. Back and forth he did this and Bellamy watched with a mixture of annoyance and disgust. He raised a fist and moved towards the man. A voice called out, commanding in the quiet night. “Stop.” 

Bellamy turned and behind him another figure came, taller and enshrouded in the deprivation of light that marked the town’s other half. A man who was at once enhanced and diminished by the darkness that encompassed his features. 

“What’s the trouble, gentlemen?” he spoke, voice resounding and the air cut by its thickness. Bellamy merely looked at the drunken fool slouched on the ground. 

“He means you no harm,” the man said, stepping out of the shadows. A dark man, tall, broad shouldered. He held out his hand. “I am Thelonious. And you?” 

Bellamy observed the man and made no move to reach for his hand. Thelonious smiled, a slight upwards curve of the mouth. He turned to the man gibbering on the ground. “And how are you tonight, Mister Murphy?” 

The drunken man spouted off a curse at them and mumbled at the dirt. “I see you’ve had a bit too much alcohol tonight, is that right?” Thelonious spoke with the calm air of authority befitting that of a teacher to his pupil, or a father to his son. He nodded, as if he had confirmed something for himself and looked at up at the night sky, eyes closed and grinning, the golden gleam of his metallic teeth matching those of the stars that glittered high above them. “A wonderful night. Wouldn’t you say so?” he breathed and Bellamy looked away, as if he had dared to look into the brilliant core of the sun at high noon and had been blinded by its power. Murphy attempted to stand and fell down on his back. 

“Ah,” Thelonious said and his smile dimmed but only just. He eyed Murphy with a measure of paternal amusement and gentle disdain. “A man who has wandered much and suffered much has pleasure out of his sorrows, yes?” 

He turned to Bellamy and this time the cowboy did not look away. He looked into the eyes of the man who towered above man drunken and not and did not notice when Thelonious produced two silver coins until they were held out to him upon a servile palm. Bellamy inspected them with a skeptical countenance, unsure and uncertain of what it was that was being presented until Thelonious gripped his arm and forced the coins into his hand. 

“ _Humilitas occidit superbiam,_ ” he said and tightened his hold on Bellamy’s hand, squeezing once and then evaporating into the darkness of the town, the only evidence of his presence being the footprints ground into the dirt road and the thin outline of his shadow melding into the thick blackness of the night. Bellamy spared Murphy one last passing glance and made his way into the hotel, placing the silver coins on the counter and sliding them towards the short stubby man who stood behind it. The man pulled out a ledger and Bellamy signed his name. The man lifted the keys to his room from the collection strung up on the wall and handed them to Bellamy. 

“You’re second on the right. Just up those stairs there.” 

Bellamy nodded and mounted the steps that creaked under the weight of his grime-coated boots and entered a narrow hallway that ended in an ignominious bare wall with no window nor decoration. He opened the door to his room and a musty smell hit him at once. He waved away the air, allowing it to flow out into the hall and stepped inside. There was a mattress, a table upon which a lantern was placed, a chair and a window covered in brown tarp. He shut the door behind him, kicked off his boots, and fell flat onto the mattress. He lay there. He did not move. He did not think and in the receding haze of waking life he saw nothing but the bareness of the room in which he now lay and he was at once repelled and attracted to the stolid fixture of its arrangement, consumed by the placement of chair and table and window and in the luminescence of the lantern that flickered and died in the way that all things do like a raven that sails over the rushing wind and air and that mysterious attractor that it must struggle against for the duration of its short and solitary life and in all of this he could see the menace of mundanity that rests and lies in wait within worldly corners obliterated by the bareness of their being; in the sooty corner of a hotel room or the dusted tables fixed to the floor of a saloon or in the great towering shiprocks that rose up from the desert floor as if the land itself had pushed up some inescapable and eternal reminder of itself, a swooning marker and declaration of its own perverse instantiation upon the horizons of the world. When he drifted to sleep he did not dream. 

Awakening to dull beams of light that filtered through the tarp of his window, Bellamy raised himself from the mattress and shuffled to his feet. He blinked, bleary eyed and groggy. He sniffed and became aware of himself in a way that he had not been before. Summoning the doorman below, he requested a tub and mirror and was obliged after a healthy delay. Positioning the tub in the center of the room, he lowered himself into the warm water and sighed, leaning his head against the cool metal and closing his eyes. Patterns of light floated in darkness and he sighed contentedly. Rubbing himself with a bar of soap he cleaned himself thoroughly and when he lifted the mirror to inspect himself his face was not a mystery to him and for this, at least, he was grateful. He dipped his clothes in the tub and scrubbed them, watching as streaks of mud and dirt detached themselves from his clothing and seeped into the tub. It was not ideal, but it was serviceable. He tossed them strategically onto the mattress where a streak of light hit the bedding and he waited, allowing them to sit there and drifting away in lazy inertia. Hours passed and when the restlessness within him had grown too strong to resist he lifted himself from the tub and donned the damp clothing. He emerged from the room without purpose or direction, descending the stairs and exiting the hotel, the doorman grunting shortly in greeting. When he stepped outside the harsh light of the sun hit him and he lowered his hat on his head. Some wagons passed and people sat in front of buildings on chairs pulled out on the wooden boards that spanned the length of the town in either direction. Bellamy strolled towards the saloon, intending to nick a drink off the bartender or at least make a good attempt at one. Instead, he was greeted by the sight of two of the girls from the previous night seated in chairs by the saloon. Clarke and Harper, he recalled with a vivid recollection of Jasper’s drunken shouting. They noticed him and Clarke smiled and waved. 

“Howdy stranger,” she greeted. Harper smiled and he nodded to them. 

“Bar open?” he asked. 

Clarke shook her head sadly. “’fraid not. Ain’t open ‘till seven.” 

He paused uncertainly. “That late?” 

Clarke laughed. “You in a hurry or something?” 

“Just never heard of a bar that opened at seven,” he retorted and she laughed again. 

“Well, we do things a little different around here,” she said good naturedly and he aimlessly kicked the dirt at his feet, preparing to turn away. 

“Hold on,” Clarke said and he paused despite himself. She peered at him and the glow in her eyes did not escape his notice. “I didn’t get to hear much about you last night.” 

Bellamy shrugged and she tilted her head in amusement. “Where do you come from, Bellamy?” 

He marveled at her memory and opened his mouth to answer when a wagon pulled up and came to a halt beside the saloon. Jasper stepped down and slapped Bellamy affably on the shoulder, he looked at the girls and grinned. 

“Monty ‘n me are about to head out again, thought I’d come by and deliver a proper goodbye,” he said, bowing theatrically. 

“You’ll only be gone for some hours,” Clarke noted.

Jasper clutched at his heart. “Don’t say you won’t miss us.” 

“Where's Monty?” Harper asked. 

Jasper shot her a knowing smile. “He’s out front getting water for the horses, I’m sure he’ll be around soon.” He turned to Bellamy. “What about you, partner? You wanna join us? We can always use an extra hand.”  
Bellamy looked out at the heated tracts of land that curled out into ever more distant sands and shook his head. “Well,” Jasper patted him on the shoulder again, “Suit yourself.” He nodded at them once more, hopped into his wagon, and led the horse towards Arkadia’s limits. They watched him go, halting the wagon as he reached the edge of town and waiting for Monty to return with water. 

“Where do they go?” Bellamy heard himself ask. 

“They go looking for anything they can get their hands on, really. Silver too,” Clarke replied.

“Silver?”

“Railroad’s passed a lot of towns dying. Arkadia too. We need what we can get, so they go out searching the old mines.”

Bellamy nodded. Whatever flame of curiosity had been lit by Jasper’s appearance had been tamped down and an impatience began to rear within him. This place is dead, he thought. Dying. Soon there would be nothing left and it would return to the dust from which it sprung, having secured for itself an aberrational existence upon infinite sands. Swallowed up in an angry chasm that gave no quarter and offered nothing of itself to those who deigned to stamp themselves upon the earth. In all the worlds to come they would share no underlying thing but their own decay. They had carved out a grave in space. He looked at Clarke and Harper and felt nothing but a twinge of envy and resentment. How easy it must be to somnambulate towards death. 

The entrance to the saloon burst open and Raven ambled out, taking in the great heat of the day with a smile and sigh. She inspected those gathered around her door. 

“We having a party out here?” 

“Just catching up with our new friend,” Clarke responded and winked at him. 

“Well, how about you catch up inside? It’s mighty hot out here.” 

They made to go inside, leaving their chairs and entering the saloon. Bellamy stood unmoving, staring at the gaping murky hole that marked the unlit spaces of the saloon’s inner sanctum. He backed away. 

“You coming?” Raven called and he cursed himself. 

It was indeed murky within. Dust flew around the room like uncoiled springs lashing out in open air. He followed them to the bar and sat on a stool, next to Clarke. 

“What do you drink? It’s on me,” she said and he pointed to the whisky. Raven poured them glasses and they relished in their drink. 

“You guys seen Finn?” Raven asked them and both Clarke and Harper shook their heads. “Probably out on the ranch,” she murmured to herself and took another swig. Bellamy emptied his glass and sat silently, a discontent settling over him. 

“You reckon Wells is with him?” Clarke asked and out of the corner of his eye Bellamy watched her gnaw at the bottom of her lip. 

“I’d reckon so,” Raven responded, “He left quick last night, didn’t he?” 

“I wonder why,” Harper sighed dourly. “Didn’t look too happy.” 

“I think it’s Thelonious,” Clarke said and Bellamy’s eyes shot to her. 

“A boy and his father,” Raven shook her head sadly. “What can you do?” 

A strange silence descended upon them and Bellamy cleared his throat. 

“Oh, my apologies,” Clarke said as if she were scandalized. “We shouldn’t be talking like this.” Bellamy shook his head and the heavy air was dispelled. “You want another drink?” she asked and Bellamy nodded. 

The doors to the saloon banged open and a call rose from the entrance. “Raven! You open early now and you don’t even tell me?” 

“Not on your life, Murphy,” Raven rolled her eyes. “We’re closed.” 

“Don’t look closed to me,” Murphy smirked and strolled over to the bar, glancing at Bellamy as he did so. “My, my, what do we have here?” 

Bellamy did not meet his eyes, looking into the amber liquid that filled his glass. 

“Leave it, Murphy,” Clarke warned. 

“Aw, what are you worried about? I’ve already met the cowboy,” he plopped down into the stool next to Bellamy. “Isn’t that right?” he smiled wickedly. The others looked at him strangely and Bellamy turned to meet Murphy’s mocking stare. His fingers clenched around his glass and he grit his teeth. 

“You best get out of my face now, or you’re going to lose yours.” 

Murphy’s lips tightened into a thin line and they stared at each other. Bellamy narrowed his eyes at the drunk and the other man worked his jaw, as if to invite the pain he knew would come. Something tore loose within Bellamy and he raised the glass, preparing to smash it on the drunk’s head. 

“Enough.” 

The command was short and curt and it cut through the air like a cannon ball crashing into rock-face. Bellamy paused, as if some unseen tendril had coiled itself around him and held him suspended in space. He turned and saw the man, stepping into the saloon with a deliberate stride. Behind him came Finn and Wells. Even in the light of the saloon, Thelonious appeared as he had the previous night, like a shadow given material shape and matter itself. Dust swirled and was blown away as he strode across creaking wood and halted before them. 

“John, I thought I said to be gentle.” 

Murphy did not reply, only grit his teeth and swiveled around in his stool to face the bar. The others looked at the man who now stood like some determined giant and his gaze swept across them all. 

“What’s going on?” Clarke asked, eyes flitting between Finn and Wells.

“I’ve a proposition,” Thelonious said and his eyes came to rest on Bellamy. He turned away, turning his back on the man and the sons he had afforded himself.

“What proposition?” Raven inquired and the biting edge in her tone was not lost upon them. 

“We can save our town.” 

In the quiet that followed Bellamy heard the sound of horses’ hooves stamping into the ground outside. They snuffled and whinnied and their snorts were emitted in short, powerful bursts. Then their owners kicked them and they walked on into the sullen street of a dying world. 

“What do you mean?” Raven pressed. 

“It’s the City of Light. I know where it is.” 

“You’re serious? This again?” 

“He’s not kidding, Raven,” Finn said and to Bellamy he sounded like a child lost in the marketplace. There was the sound of muffled rustling and Thelonious’s voice rang like a rock dropped in a well. “See for yourself,” he said and tossed something onto the bar-top. Bellamy could not resist the urge to look. Sneaking a glance at the gleam of circular silver that lay on thistlelike wood he could discern some strange symbol that wound in upon itself in two distinct loops as two side faced ovals bound together by one common string. 

Raven pinched it gently between her fingers and held it up for inspection. “I don’t…” 

“It’s out there. It’s real.” 

“What’s real?” 

Thelonious’s serene smile widened. 

“Okay,” Clarke interjected, “Even if it was real, which I’m not saying it is,” she looked nervously at the people gathered about her, “What would you have us do? Why are you here?” 

“I need help. I have proof but I do not have people. I’ve come to gather participants willing to volunteer time and livelihood to an expedition.” 

“An expedition…” Clarke stared at a spot above their heads as if contemplating some deep problem. 

“It is out there. I know it. Now I have the way.” 

“How do you know?” Raven narrowed her eyes at Thelonious who stood like a boar bearing the brunt of the litter’s blows. “How do you know where to go from this?” she held up the silver object. 

“Oh Miss Reyes,” he said and now he grinned like he had heard the funniest joke in the world, “I know because it speaks to me.” 

When Bellamy entered his room in the hotel it felt to him as if he was relieved of some monumental weight. He sat at the edge of the mattress, staring out at the distorted shadows that moved across the tarp of his window and he wondered if maybe now he hadn’t stayed too long. A wanderer wanders, he thought in an opaque cloud of loose thought that flirted the boundary between dazed dreaming and the scuttle of shadow at the edge of one’s vision. But when a wanderer stays in one place too long someone is bound to catch up. Drops of rain began to patter against the window and hit the street of Arkadia with a dull muted thudding and somewhere off in the desert distance the sky began to rumble and groan. So it was that he slipped under the fuzzy boundary between the conscious and its antithesis; an unspeakable thing that chafed and roared at the construction that held it in thrall to the whims of each and every man beyond his own knowing. 

When he awoke the day was waning and there was knock at the door. Three sharp raps and an uncertain tapping of the foot. He lay in wait and listened. When it came again he stiffened and approached the door slowly. He peered down at the shadow that rippled and spread from the dim light under his door. “Who is it?” he called out and a muffled voice came back to him, “It’s me.” He opened the door slowly and found Clarke standing expectantly with a look that belied the boundless and nervous energy he intuited simmered within her. A quick smile graced her face and she examined his features.

“You look surprised,” she observed.

“Wasn’t expecting it,” he said gruffly. 

She nodded. “Can I come in?” 

He stood aside and motioned her inside. She made a show of inspecting the place, her head hovering from side to side as he closed the door and leaned against it. He waited for her to begin. 

“I came to ask something of you.”

“Okay.” 

“I know we don’t know each other well.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“But I wanted to ask anyway.” 

“Go ahead.”

She took a breath and leveled him with a look of unwavering severity. “I’d like you to come with us.” 

“Come with you where?” 

She took another breath, as if to steady herself against the words she was about to speak. “To find the City of Light.” 

He was surprised at the laugh that came from him. He shook his head, amused and suddenly light of heart. “To find what?” 

“I know it sounds stupid. But if there’s a chance – a chance that it’s real…I have to go.” 

“Okay.” 

“Okay?” 

“What would you have me say?” 

She looked at him like he bore two heads instead of one. “To question my sensibility as a woman…to question the whys and whats.” 

“I don’t care about the whys nor the whats. And I don’t care about your sensibilities.” 

She hung her head. 

“But I will come with you.” 

She smiled. 

They gathered at the edge of town as the first light of the new day broke over the sky. The sandy ground was still soggy from the night’s depositing and a gentle breeze nipped at their faces. Bellamy approached the circular arrangement they had without knowing it concocted. Jasper and Monty tended to the horses, ensuring the wagons were stocked with water and hay, Wells sharpened knives and Finn wiped away at the chamber of a single Colt .45, Raven, Harper, and Clarke gathered food and drink from the saloon. Murphy sat sneering at the rest of them while Thelonious inspected the expansive plains that opened out into vast fields of earthy ground; he turned when he heard the sound of Bellamy’s boots crunching against wet sand and grinned when he saw the cowboy. 

“What’s he doing here?” Murphy called. 

“He’s coming with us,” Clarke said. Murphy harrumphed and fell silent.

“I hope Miller can run the place alright while we’re gone,” Raven fretted, gazing mournfully at the saloon. 

Clarke waved a hand dismissively. “We took almost all the shit inside. Don’t think there’s much to run. ‘sides, it won’t matter so long as we come back with something.” 

Raven said nothing and turned to the others. Clarke caught Bellamy’s eyes and nodded at him.

“Alright,” Thelonious led an assortment of horses to them, enough for everyone but Jasper and Monty who would work the wagon. He led a horse that seemed to drag its hooves rather than clop to Bellamy. He patted it on its mane and looked at Bellamy.

“Hope you don’t mind black,” he said, smiling, and walked away. Bellamy mounted his horse. 

“Let’s go,” Thelonious called. And they rode into the wilderness. 

The day was cool and the sun was merciful. They followed Thelonious in a disorganized grouping of horse and wagon, with Bellamy occupying the tail end of the troupe. The scorched sand of the desert gradually gave way to short shrubland that billowed out of rocky arches and hills. Arkadia grew smaller until in its place nothing could be perceived but the truncated form of a tiny brown dot that hovered and shook in the simmering whip of the wind. All bearing was lost and Bellamy smiled, a contented buzz vibrating deep in his chest. They were alone with the world now. They were dependent on nothing but the soil from which they came. Thelonious led the pack, a dark shape that remained perennially ahead, never pausing to gather direction nor search for a landmark, an easy confidence that acted to relieve the others of concern. There was nothing to do but follow. Bellamy looked to his sides and ahead. No cloud nor crow touched the sky. A steady stillness seemed to hang in the air as the horses gathered a haze of dust around them, a cloud that followed them and remained floating in the air like some spectral remnant of departed histories that would not be enveloped into the embrace of that one insuperable thing. 

That thing, Bellamy thought, and now the pleasant buzz in his head seemed to clear at once and he was alert. He looked around him, the others rode their horses like they had fallen into a trance, eyes focused, heads unmoving. Only Murphy seemed to shatter the dreamy mentality that had fallen upon them, he yawned and rubbed at his eyes and sometimes his head nodded and he was driven to blink forcefully to stay awake. They continued on until the shrubland became grassland and the sun had reached its midpoint. They stopped for a drink of water. Monty filled a large bucket with water and watched over the horses as they took turns lapping at it. The others drank from canteens. Bellamy observed the land around them. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Clarke stood next to him and he glanced at her.

“It is what it is.” 

She chuckled and raised her canteen to her lips. “Nothing much impresses you, I take it?” 

Bellamy shrugged and they mounted their horses again. In the declining light of the day they passed over fields of short yellow grass that waved in tandem to the movement of the wind. Like a song, Bellamy wondered. Everything has a rhythm. The sky changed above them and the space around them changed with it. The light of day is different in its many hours and within lies a reflection of the people who travel under it. The place of early morning light is bright and triumphant and the melancholy of late afternoon had begun to swell around them until Bellamy could not look at the ground without seeing in the blanket of sunshine something mournful. Soon it was evening and they stopped to tie their horses to the wagon, gathering the firewood stored within and setting fire to it with a match and the frantic reassurance of Jasper’s oxygenated huffing. Around the campfire they sat and dived into warm tin cans of beans and some of them chatted amongst themselves while others focused on the food before them. Bellamy wolfed down his own portion and tossed the can into the grass. 

Jasper wagged his finger at him playfully. “You’d defile the beauty of this here field of grass?” 

Bellamy eyed him from across the fire and Jasper held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m only sayin’.” 

“When are we getting to the city, Jaha?” Murphy called to Thelonious. The man was not eating, but sitting with his head pointed towards the ground and his eyes closed. One could have mistaken him for a sleeping man. He opened his eyes and lifted his head at the sound of Murphy’s voice. 

“We’re on the path.” 

“That’s it? Not gonna tell us how we’re getting there?” 

“I would not worry yourself, John.” 

“Well, I’m bored,” Murphy grumbled. “Ain’t a whole lot to do out here.” 

“But there is much to see.” 

Murphy snorted. Finn chewed on the inside of his cheek and bumped his shoulder to Wells. He grinned in the orange flickering of the flame. 

“How about a game?” he propositioned and the others were called to attention. 

“What game?” Raven narrowed her eyes at him. 

“A fun one,” he said and he twirled a knife in his hands. “We go around the fire and say something about ourselves.”

“That’s fun?” Jasper questioned. 

“Sure, because it has to be something secret,” Finn smiled fiendishly. 

“Something secret…” Monty tapped his can on the ground. 

“It has to be something interesting. I’ll go first,” he looked around at them and his eyes settled on Clarke, who watched him suspiciously. “I want to bed someone here,” he said. Jasper and Murphy huffed laughter, Raven shook her head and Clarke clucked her tongue and looked away.

“See? Hilarious. Now we go around,” Finn stuck his foot out and nudged Wells’ leg. “You go, buddy.”

“I can’t hold a damn drink.”

“I got some bad bumps on the ol’ pecker once after I went for some low hangin’ fruit.” 

“I don’t like my job, I guess.” 

“Riding horses gives me a bad itch.” 

“I hate men.” 

“I’m _bored_.”

“My mother used to call me Lewis.” 

They looked to Bellamy and under their combined stares the heat of the fire grew hotter. He looked at the ground as he spoke. 

“I had a sister.” 

They fell silent, their faces a mosaic of floating shapes and color in the flames. A hawk screeched somewhere in the sky and a coyote howled, its echo rebounding across the steady cricketing of the night. They lay themselves on the grass, tugging bundles of cotton cushioning around and under them and they slept.  
_1:1: Alie on the hatred of music_

They rode out again as the sun began its careful ascent over the fields. The sky was a deep violet and it seemed to blaze with a ferocity matched only by the wilderness below. They passed over flat fields that went on until Bellamy began to wonder whether there was anything else in the world left to see. In time the ground curved upwards and they traveled along the incline until they could on all sides the plains sweeping out across the curve of the earth. Grass turned to rock again and they navigated the intricacies of a mountainside, the horse riders taking care to trot alongside the wagon at an even pace, ensuring it did not catch itself in any loose ground or topple over edges. The shade of the rock-face kept them insulated from the harsh glare of the sun and the trees kept them refreshed in the shade; olden oak that stretched high above them, spidery webs of branch and root crisscrossing in tangled sheets of intricate patterns, the product of centuries at work. Some things last forever, or almost so. 

They halted at the peak of a high hillside. Thelonious dropped from his horse and stood examining the landscape before them. He stood unmoving and the others looked at each other unsurely, nervously, until he mounted his horse again and they rode down the hill and back onto flat ground. They caught the sun and Bellamy tipped the rim of his hat so that it covered the top half of his face. The rhythm of his horse beating against the ground, rising and falling like an easy breath in the wind, lulled him to a state of drowsiness and he caught himself close to unconsciousness several times before he straightened himself and lifted his hat again. He looked at the others and saw them sweating under the watchful presence of the sky’s eye. He saw Clarke, beating her foot lightly against the side of her horse and rubbing its mane. She spoke silently, mouthing something that only she and the horse could hear, head swaying gently from side to side. Bellamy observed her curiously. She was singing. 

In the shrubbery of the desert they rested and sat in a loose semi-circle. Bellamy drank from his canteen and rested his head against the boulder on which he lay half splayed and staring at the brightness of the cloudless sea that worked to contain them and all things alike. Staring lazily at an unmoving boundary he felt as if he would dissolve into it and become it and find in it some solace from the hardness of the barren world they inhabited. The others too found themselves lost in inertia so that when it came time to move again the sun had already reached its nadir and they stopped again to set up camp. Settling around the fire the pretension of entertainment was not again countenanced and they watched the flames leap and black smoke coil and twist into the dark of a starry night where it too dissolved, spread out along the sweep of a globular and heavenly realm beyond that on which they sat.

The broken sound of a breathy harmonica rose up out of the silent night and they turned to watch Murphy struggle with the silver instrument. He blew into it and the strained note screamed like the cry of a dying deer. The others winced and heckled him. He raised it to his lips for another attempt when it was snatched out of his hands and crushed, snapping and crinkling like firecrackers set loose, the broken remains seeping out of the large dark hand and scattering in the wind.  
Murphy scowled at Thelonious, his brows furrowed in annoyance and frustration. “The hell you do that for?!” 

“Melodious though you may be, there is no place here for sounds imported from minds unknowing to what they have begotten.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Murphy grumbled.

“Did the Sirens not seduce with their sickly hymns? Do men not slaughter one another to the sound of a rousing symphony?” 

No one spoke. 

“Music is an indulgence to man’s greatest follies. It is at once the seducer and the slaughterer. Where men bring with them vanity, greed, and the ravages of sword and bullet they bring with them the sounds that have percolated in the depths of their shared existence until it becomes the official stamp on which they rule. It is legislator and legislation. The wicked ways of the world are facilitated by the enjoyment inherent in its action. One who surrenders themselves to sound deafens themselves to that which has provided it.” 

Murphy dug his feet into the ground, arms crossed, and yawned heartily. The others made their bundles and slept.  
_1:2: Alie on Naturphilosophie_

They awoke to the crack of thunder and the light puttering of rain upon the soil. They gathered up their supplies and gathered themselves upon their horses. In the sigh of the greying dawn they marched across stony barrens and the blanket of cloud moved with them like a silent watcher. The shrubbery whistled in the gathering wind and several small rodents scurried under rock. A collection of darker clouds imposed themselves upon the horizon and together they paused to watch them sweep across the sky.  
“We better get out of the way,” Raven murmured and the others made noise in their assent. They kicked at their horses and took off, weaving between boulders fixed in the ground by years of stagnation and slowing to push their way over inclines. The distant rumbling grew louder and the wind picked up speed so that Bellamy was forced to tighten his hold upon the reins of his horse to keep steady. He felt his hat removed by the force of the gale and he kicked again and again at his horse, willing it to go faster. Few of the others had fallen behind while others roared ahead and the horses trembled under the strain of their effort. A dark row, a line of tall black shapes stood unmoving in the distance. Bellamy squinted at the sight and nearly fell from his horse. 

“To the forest!” someone called and without further rumination they dashed forward towards the shelter of the trees. The ground darkened around them and Bellamy understood that they were caught in it now without recourse to some ulterior means of escape. There was just now themselves and the trees. Large drops of rain lashed at him, splattering and exploding across his face, blinding him to the sights all around him. The wind hurled him forward and to the side until he was no more riding his horse than clawing at it, wrapping his body around the bulk of the horse and holding on for his life. Another crack like a gunshot exploded above him and the hairs on his arms stood on edge and out of the corner of his vision he saw the sky pulsating and shifting, blinding white bands of electricity sparking down from the world above and striking out at them below. His horse whinnied fretfully and reared its body, tossing Bellamy from its back. His head connected with the thick trunk of a tree and he fell face first onto the ground, his head thumping hard into the firmness of the forest floor. He lay there, a taste of metal gathering at his lips and he slipped away in the rain, eyes closing under the spreading warmth of his head. 

He awoke to a hand that pushed at his shoulder with a frantic urgency. He groaned and looked up with an unfocused perplexity at pulsating dots that popped in and out of existence, the fuzzy treetops, and Clarke. 

“Bellamy, Bellamy, can you hear me?”

“I’m –“ he coughed and drops of blood flew off his lip, “I’m alright,” he pushed himself to a sitting position and his head flared with pain. He cringed and hissed. 

“Don’t try to move too fast,” Clarke counseled. He poked experimentally at his head and felt pain and wetness. 

“Where is everyone?” 

Clarke looked at him with a desperation he had not seen before. “They’re a little ways away,” she said and her eyes shined with something sad. “It’s not good.” 

“What isn’t?” 

“Raven,” she said simply. He moved to stand and the movement of his neck caused a blearing pain to spike up his neck. 

“Stop – stop, don’t move,” Clarke said. She went around him, reaching around to grab at the underside of his arm and with her help he hauled himself up. He wobbled and reached out at the trunk stained with his blood to steady himself, the forest swimming in his vision like an emerald sea. “How many horses?” he asked as she led him towards the others, one arm wrapped securely around his waist. She shook her head. “Some ran off in the storm.” 

They reached a tiny clearing where the rest of them stood gathered around something. Bellamy heard the sounds of pained groans and whimpering before he saw it. On the ground lay Raven, a sharp and bulky branch driven through her left leg just above the ankle. Blood pooled around it and melted into the ground and the grass around her was red. Monty was kneeled beside her, his hands moving around the branch like a mime but refusing to touch it. Beads of sweat trickled down from Raven’s temples and at the bloody scene before him Bellamy shut his eyes in recognition and resignation. 

“Oh…oh God,” Raven breathed and when Monty touched the branch she screamed so loudly that a group of quail swept up from the forest in surprise. 

“How do we take it out?” Monty stared fearfully at the trembling woman before him. 

“The foot’s no good,” Finn said gently, as if his words could only soothe with a measured pitch. Raven looked at him painfully and angrily. “No! _No! Don’t touch my foot!_ ” she screeched.

“Raven…” Clarke whispered. “We have to do something.” 

“Not that…please, not that,” Raven moaned.

From the remains of the wagon that had collided and splintered against a tree, Wells approached with a knife in hand, slowly, as if every step was a cut that struck deep inside him. 

“Listen, listen to me. I can walk, I can walk fine. Look – see – “ Raven made to roll over and the branch embedded within her scraped against the ground and she cried out shrilly. 

“Just hold my hand,” Clarke said, crouching down and taking Raven’s hand into her own. Raven shook her head stubbornly. “Please, it’s fine. I’ll be able to walk fine,” she whispered. 

“It’ll get infected,” Wells said. “It’ll die. You know we have to.” 

They stood there like ritualists gathered around a sacrifice, all wavering in the face of a certainty about to come. Wells gripped the knife in his hand, stepped forward, and stepped back.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t do it.” 

Nobody moved and it was only the sound of Raven’s labored panting that reminded them of what curious convergence of accident and fortune urged them forward. Murphy stepped up from behind Wells, taking the knife into his hand and kneeling beside Raven. 

“Sorry about this,” he said, and Bellamy had time to note that he did look genuinely sorry. 

It was lengthy and it hurt to hear. Her screams were agonizing and she was passed out when it hit bone. When it was over the foot lay detached, surrounded in a darkening puddle of its own making and Raven lay twitching and perspiring against Clarke who gently smoothed over her hair and whispered nothings to her. They rushed to wrap a bandage around the bloodied stump that had once connected foot and leg. Finn gathered her up in his arms and a lightness held them in silence. They looked at each other as if emerging from a trance, like they had come out of a long dream. 

“Now what?” Jasper asked. 

“Now we continue,” Thelonious said, as if it were not a question at all. 

“With what? We lost a bunch of horses,” Wells said. Thelonious turned to him and Bellamy watched the boy clench his jaw as if he were resisting some great weight that had suddenly descended on him. 

“Look at her,” Finn said, looking down at the girl hung limp in his arms, “She can’t keep on like this.” 

“All the more reason to find the City of Light,” Thelonious responded. 

“ _Where_ is the City of Light?!” Finn shouted. “We’ve been out here for days and still nothing!” 

Thelonious was quiet for a moment and looked at Finn thoughtfully. Then he turned away. “Come, gather what you can and let’s go,” he said. 

They did not get far. The forest thickened and what remained of the day was short. Jasper and Monty pulled at the broken wagon, but its weight forced them to take frequent breaks. Murphy walked with them without speaking, a blank expression held on his face. They stopped in a small tiny clearing and placed firewood on the ground. The matches were running short and Monty removed one of the last, lighting it and flicking into the bundle of wood. Finn lay Raven gently down on a cotton bundle and sat beside her. Clarke occupied her other side. They sat and let the unspoken weight of the day carry their thoughts away. 

Murphy sat with his head in his stained hands until it seemed he could no longer remain still and moved to lie on the ground. 

“Not what you thought it would be?” Thelonious broke the silence and Murphy did not turn his head. Thelonious swept the circle they had made around the fire with his eyes. He landed on Raven and Clarke stroked her head protectively. 

“Understand that the ground on which we walk is not that in which we know and sleep and drink and play. It is something prior and primitive. The last of a breed that is slowly being extirpated from this earth. It is the poison of romance and the destruction of the idol that this land retains in its being and purpose. The fool who seeks without knowing what he seeks comes up empty handed. Those who come out here in search of nothing return to nothing. _Pari Passu_.”

“That’s a nice theory,” Murphy muttered. 

Thelonious smiled. “You laugh, but when you look up at those trees, what do you see? I see the actualization of potential. It is that in virtue of which something is in itself that exists. The only thing that exists. Out here in this land you will find nothing but those elements that have been squared away and forgotten by man in his reckless endeavor across the world and continent and country. And for what? ‘Destiny’. There are those who would do well to run up against this great tide of Nature and see what will remain of their destiny. A broken-up wreckage. A trick of the light gone dark and the wisp of the willow extinguished under the immanent thumb of the chain of causes lead to and by that final cause. There are essences and they watch us awake and asleep.”  
Bellamy lay awake until the cackling of a dying fire finally put him to sleep. 

_1:3: Alie on what there is_

Half crazed mutterings and cries awoke them before the sun came up and while the coolness of the night still persisted, the fire reduced to a shimmering glow. Raven thrashed in her sleep and Clarke sat poised above her, running her fingers through her hair and whispering to her. She looked to the others fearfully and in the dark of the morning it appeared to Bellamy that pupil and iris had become one and that her eyes had turned black. He looked away and sat watching the remains of their campfire as the others steadily, silently, gathered their things and prepared to renew their venture. Sweat poured down Raven’s face and several times she cried out, as if even in sleep she could not escape that which hunted her in waking life. Her movements and talk ceased suddenly, all at once, as the new light of the day diffused through the trees. She died in her sleep.

Clarke would not move and Bellamy wanted to go to her, to kneel down and reassure and comfort, but he was held back by some intangible division within him that neutered his will and his courage and then something tangible too – Wells approached her, softly and with grace, as if he were treading on glass with bare feet, and wrapped an arm around her. The others stood watching grimly and without comment. Jasper and Monty counted what remained of their horses – three in all, and took what they could from the wagon, food, water, and Harper took on the task of hauling the bucket, now stacked with hay, for the horses. They moved out into the forest, much slower now, each weaving separate paths through the thickness of the wood. Bellamy observed with some faint interest the passing of the trees, the buoyancy of the leaves hung in the air, the spindles that grew with them and the branches that held them in space. What it must be like to have them driven through you, to return to the land that begot you and those before you and to sink back like a melting puddle, like an attribute of some underlying permanence that reaches up to seize what has dangled away from it. In the wide-open world there is happiness and joy but where is grief? It lies in the faces and the bones and the hearts of every person – a clock that ticks away until it comes time to collect. It rests in dreams, in hushed talk in beds, in seeds planted in the minds of men that look upon the vast substance that bounds them and believe they encompass no small portion of it. It lurks in the everyday corners of the world, in the trees and the grass and the dust of desert sand and it lies in wait for someone to find it, or perhaps it seeks them out. Did Raven find the branch that felled her or did it find her? Some shapeless monstrosity, omniscient and present in all things? Bellamy shook in the slick low-lying heat of woodland mist. They emerged from the wood. A stream rushed past them and continued winding down the low lands they had stumbled upon. Hearty grassland sprung up around them and thick, dark trees stood in a collection that ringed the valley. 

“Drink if you need to,” Thelonious ordered. They unloaded the things they carried and collected themselves by the stream, some splashing water onto their faces and others seated and watching blankly as it passed by. Bellamy saw Clarke stand and trace the path of the stream down into the trees. She disappeared into a brush and he fixed his eyes upon the space which she had just occupied. Wells was filling his canteen in the stream and Bellamy, pushing down inhibitions that rose up like spidery legs within his chest, followed Clarke into the brush. He battled oversized leaves and bulky roots and the stabbing of vines that pricked at his arms and his face stumbling out into a clearing and his eyes widened at the sight. 

Clarke, her naked back to him, shirt thrown without caution to the ground beside her, rubbing her wet hand over her shoulders. Bathing, he realized, his eyes transfixed by the girl as he receded into the bushes behind him. He felt strange watching her. It had been so long, he knew, so long since had seen – been – with any woman. He watched tiny streams of water trickle down the arc of her back and he wondered at it. Unbounded, uninhibited, unconstrained, there is a personal freedom in the removal of one’s clothing, a vulnerability and a power to it seldom matched nor even understood by the whispers and talk of trades that stand diminished in its midst. In the understanding of oneself there is both rejuvenation and destruction – twin dispositions bordering on tyranny and a synthesis that pronounces its inseparability, local entities with nonlocal properties. Infinite spaces compounded into one finite spot, one moment in time. A naked woman is like Nature and Nature is like her. Malevolent and curious, infinitely mysterious and the sweet aching of time lost and regained and remembered surged within. Bellamy turned away, taking care not to rustle the bushes, and dragged his feet back to camp. He felt hot angry wetness blurring his vision and he rubbed furiously at them. He was lost. 

Clarke returned and they moved out again, taking care to lead the horses gently across the stream where it was most shallow. Under the baleful filament of the morning light they trudged over hills and across a network of rivers and streams that cut through the landscape like a woodcut carved by transcendent artistry. Wells and Clarke walked side by side and Bellamy followed behind them, watching him take her hand in his and the smile she gave him and he cursed himself and a struggle broke out within him to understand – to quantify and catalogue and categorize. He turned to Finn and saw him, head down, eyes planted firmly on the ground, arms dangling at his sides like he had lost all pretense of continence. Bellamy paused to consider whether they were in dire straits – and how they would know it if they were. He remembered days by the shore, ensconced in fields of lilac and sunflower, the haughty bellowing and laughter that sang melodiously over startled woodpeckers and pugnacious pigeons that braved the land for a chance at a breadcrumb. He shook his head and pressed on. 

They covered far less ground than they had the previous day and when the sun came down they had not yet left the valley. They gathered by a stream and lay out a few logs of wood. Monty procured one of the few remaining matches and lit the fire. They watched the fire crackle to life and in the heat that reached him Bellamy felt another warmth at his side. He turned to Clarke, who did not remove her gaze from the fire. He sought for something to say. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. Clarke said nothing. A sniffling came over the sound of the fire and he looked to Finn and saw tears glide down his cheeks. 

“See that stream,” Thelonious spoke and pointed to the water rushing and roiling past them. “Watch it come to be and pass away and know that what pains you now will become you too in time.” 

“What are you talking about?” Wells demanded. “What’s your problem?” 

“Things come to be and pass away, that is the nature of things. But of those things that are said to be themselves insofar as they are, there is an undying eternity that persists even past the end of its affections. The world is a river and it consists of many parts and many places but what is it that is shared, that remains even after all things go away in their finitude? It is the container of the world, the innermost motionless boundary of a thing that resists what we cannot. Generation and destruction are but appearances and shadows on the wall.” 

“Sure feels real to me,” Murphy shot back. Thelonious turned to him. 

“Accept that a proposition, any proposition, is caught between the truth and falsehood and that its ultimate status is one and not the other nor both and you will see that what I say is no lie. Reject this and the world you live in is no world at all.” 

Bellamy lay himself down to sleep, arms folded neatly over his chest and he looked up at the beads of light that dotted the sky and watched one arc over the trees and behind the distant peak of a mountaintop. 

_1:4: Alie on fate and modality_

Under the toil of sweltering heat they emerged from the valley and found themselves in the desert once again. They checked their canteens and filled them with what they could. Jasper and Monty, straining under the weight of the wagon, dropped it behind them and gathered what remained of their food and wood. They looked out at the expanse of desert and the collective weight upon their shoulders seemed only to grow at the sight of it. Thelonious led them forward and with some reluctance they marched out into the wildness. They followed the bend of a path flanked on both sides by the high walls of plateaus that rode up into a cumulous sea. They passed a collection of crudely constructed holdings embedded into the mountainside and they marveled at the sight of it; a relic of a time long past stamped out of existence and bearing nothing but itself as a remnant of those who had once forged it out of the nothingness of the earth. Now they melded with the mountain and soon they would become it. They slogged over difficult ground and their boots sloshed in mud and from behind Bellamy heard something whiz past in the air and a breeze rushed against the side of his face. He stopped and looked around him, calling to the others to halt their steps. There was another whooshing sound and someone cried out and gargled in the air and another screamed and Bellamy had scant time to comprehend what had occurred when somebody was pushing him away as thin blurs rained down around them. He was shoved into a small alcove carved into the plateau where the others had taken refuge and in his mind Bellamy performed a head count and found one missing. He peered out into the mud and was sent reeling at the sight of someone lying motionless in the mud, an arrow stuck prominently out of the neck. 

“What -?” 

“Don’t go out there,” Thelonious warned. 

“What happened?” Wells huffed, his hand to his chest and his breath coming in short angry spasms. 

“Indians,” Murphy spat bitterly. “I’d bet you anything.” 

“Oh God,” Harper cupped her mouth betwixt her hands. “They got Finn.” 

The arrows stopped falling and the silence was broken only by the cawing of birds somewhere high above them. The travelers crouched in the entryway to the cave and huddled together, observing the still body as it lay ignominiously in the mud. Much time passed and the day turned dark before Wells stood among them and looked out with a fiery determination. 

“We have to get him,” he said and most did not bother to glance at him. 

“We can’t,” Monty said. “It’s too dangerous.” 

Wells stepped forward until he was at the mouth of the cave and braced his hands against the walls. “We have to. He would do the same for us.” 

“Wells – please,” Clarke reached for him. “They’ll kill you too.” 

“And if we stay here they won’t?” he responded. He shook his head. “No. I have to do this.” 

“What are you trying to prove, man?” Murphy called from the back of the cave. “Dying out here ain’t gonna bring anyone back.” 

“Thelonious, say something,” Clarke begged. The man remained where he was, looking ahead at the body in the mud, his eyes half closed in the darkness of the cave. 

“It is his choice to make.” 

Wells grit his teeth and sprang forward, rushing over to the body and pulling under the arms, turning it and beginning to drag it back to the cave. Mud stuck to the both of them as Wells heaved towards the cave. A single arrow flew out of the sky and pierced the ground at Wells’ feet and he hopped up, dropping the body and falling backwards into the mud. Clarke called his name and ran out to get him but Bellamy reached out and gripped her arm. She turned to him and her eyes blazed with fury and for a moment his grip loosened and she pulled free, rushing out to help Wells stand. Wells reached for Finn’s body again but Clarke grabbed his arm and pulled him back towards the cave. More arrows came down and struck Finn’s body, leaving a quick volley of sickening cracks to echo through the desert air. 

“I tried – I can’t –“ Wells collapsed against the wall of the cave. Bellamy stood, certain now in the knowledge of what had to be done. He stepped out into the path and heard the others call his name. He raised his arms into the air, holding them as he stepped to the body of what had just hours before been Finn Collins. He held his hands up and faced the direction in which the arrows had come. 

“We surrender!” he called. “You hear me?! We _surrender!_ ” 

Nothing came. No response. No arrow. There was, ultimately, nothing left to be done. He slowly dropped his hands to his sides and scanned the horizon. His gaze swept across the homes in the mountain and for a moment something flittered in the shade between the houses. He squinted and saw a faint shape make it way across the cliffside and disappear around the bend of the plateau. Bellamy turned to the others and motioned for them to come out. They emerged cautiously, taking light steps into the mud and approaching the body with a feathery hesitance. They gathered around it and looked down at the body. Jasper kneeled and pulled at the arrow but it would not budge. 

“Now what?” Murphy asked. 

“Now we bury him,” Clarke said and there were no objections. When it was done, when the last light of the day burned an orange haze across a navy sky, they looked down at the mound that had unknowingly become the final resting place of a man they once knew and Clarke looked resolutely up at the others, her face betraying no hint of sadness or remorse. 

“Would anyone like to speak?” she asked. Nobody did. She nodded and turned her head to the makeshift grave. 

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said and now Bellamy heard her sniffle. “I’m really sorry.” 

She looked hard at Thelonious and he did not meet her stare. 

They constructed a fire with the last of their matches and wood and they gathered closer together than in previous nights and Thelonious dictated to them, speaking of things seen and heard in the woods and of strange lights witnessed dancing and bobbing through night skies. He spoke of anomalies in the order of things and how everything returns to the Same at last. When Clarke heaved a hefty sigh, he turned to her. 

“Do you object, Miss Griffin?” 

“I just don’t see what the purpose of all this is.” 

“ _Is_ there a purpose to all of this?” 

“My friend died today.” 

“Indeed,” Thelonious said, “He died just as others do and the particular sequence of his death does belie a hidden hand, a conspiratorial assemblage that directs a course for any and for all. The order of our lives are driven by a curious arrangement not of heavenly bodies but of an ensemble of hidden entities each more insidious than the last. Objective propensities that dictate the course of everyday life, the necessity that determines the circumstance before it can give rise to itself and the eternal actuality that keeps the world spinning on its everlasting course. It is the chance encounters of life that are subordinated to an overarching fate and to the inner workings of that unmoved mover.” 

“Yeah, well, your unmoved mover can go shove it up his ass.” 

Thelonious smiled wanly. “One enemy at a time,” he said and pointed to the sky. 

Bellamy dreamt of lights and fields of sunflower. He reached out, arms extended and hands clutching in desperation and found naught but empty air. 

_1:5: Alie on temporality and causality_

Plateaus and hillocks turned to flat empty land and they struggled over great expanses of nothing. Far-away clouds seemed to reach down across the sky and poke at the line of the horizon and they found themselves moving sluggishly, dragging feet and shoulders slumped. Bellamy looked at the others and knew that they were running out of time. Time. In the remembrance of things past he saw himself positioned in the great wild that seemed never to end and the reassurances that accompanied it and the explosion of buckshot and the flocks in flight that followed it and even the swell of pride as he looked down at his catch and the praise that was showered upon him like an arrow forced down by the ubiquitous attraction of the earth below - he recalled waking up in the morning and the sweet smell of biscuit and lemons wafting up to him, the scampering of feet like a feline moving towards the reward of its kill and he remembered the lowering of a casket into the ground and felt the tears slipping down his cheeks both then and now. 

They passed through a wide forest of thick trees and a dull roar sounded over the trees. 

“Thank the Lord,” Jasper said, “I’m parched to high hell.” 

They gathered by a wide river and filled their canteens. Bellamy stood looking out to the other side. It was wide. Too wide. It would not be crossed. The thin rustle of bushes behind them caught his attention and he turned to the disturbance. The flora moved gently in the wind and he released a breath he did not know he was holding. Someone touched his side and his insides sank. 

“Don’t move,” Clarke murmured and he tensed. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

“Someone’s following us,” she said, staring along at the river with him. 

“How do you know?” 

“I’ve heard them since at least the start of the wood and I saw them too.” 

Bellamy shifted uncomfortably. “What do you propose?” 

“We can’t risk them knowing we know. There could be more than one. If we just wait out here they’ll have to show themselves eventually,” she explained.

“Your plan is to keep us out in the open?” 

“You got something better?” 

“Yeah, we get everyone else to stay here and double around back. Divide their attention and catch the son of a bitch,” Bellamy explained. 

“That could get us killed,” Clarke said. 

“We’re already dying out here, princess.” 

Clarke punched his arm. “Alright,” she said, worrying her lip. “Let’s go.” 

They told the others that they would make a short excursion into the woods to gather firewood and grabbed two knives. They followed the course of the river for a while before penetrating the forest. They crept silently through the trees, finding nothing but the tittering of birds and tiny mammals that scattered as they approached. They began to circle back around towards the group when Bellamy held out an arm and crouched low. Clarke followed him to ground. 

“What is it?” she asked. 

Bellamy held a finger to his lips. “I see something,” he said in a hushed whisper and pointed ahead. Through the trees there was movement and the form of a human shape slowly materialized into view. Bellamy moved behind a tree and Clarke did the same across from him. The figure moved towards them and the sound of plants being torn from their roots approached like the inexorable chugging of a train. 

The person passed them and Bellamy sprung out from behind the tree, wrapping his arms around their neck and pulling them to him. The other person fell backwards, crying out in surprise and waved a bow wildly around in hand. 

“Drop it,” Bellamy commanded, “Drop it now.” 

The person continued to struggle before dropping the bow and Bellamy pushed them into a tree. Their head slammed against the trunk and they fell backwards. Bellamy kneeled over them and gripped their throat. He paused, recoiling at the sight of the girl under him after her hood slipped off and a mess of wavy brown hair lay splayed around her. She looked up at him fiercely, lips held tightly together, her hands gripping his arms. 

“Who are you?!” Bellamy demanded. “ _Tell me!_ ” 

He released some pressure on her throat and she coughed violently. She uttered short unintelligible phrases and Bellamy hauled her to her feet in frustration. He pushed her forward, Clarke followed behind him, bow in hand, and she grabbed the quiver of arrows that was tucked securely into the back packet of the woman’s long fur-coat. They forced her out of the underbrush and into the clearing beside the river. The others looked up in surprise and Bellamy shoved her. She fell to her knees before them and they made deep imprints in the wet grass. 

“What’s this?” Thelonious questioned, looking curiously down at the girl. 

“She was following us,” Bellamy panted. “She had a bow and arrows. I think she’s the one who shot Finn.” 

“What?” Wells asked, examining the girl. “Are you certain?” 

“Pretty certain,” Bellamy asserted. He kicked her in the back. “Tell us your name.” 

The girl said nothing for a few moments. And then she spat, “Echo.” 

"Echo? Is that your name?” 

She would say no more. 

“Where did you come from?”

They issued forth a barrage of questions that would not be answered. At last, Thelonious sighed and grabbed her, pulling her to him by her neck until their noses were almost touching. 

“Do you know the City of Light?” he asked. 

She spat in his face and for a moment he merely looked at her. Then, suddenly, as if seized by some electric impulse, he dragged her to the river and forced her head into the water. She spluttered and shook her head furiously and his enormous hand pushed it deeper.

Bellamy sighed. “Wait, wait,” he came forward and at the sound of her continued choking he gripped Thelonious’s shoulder. “Stop it.” 

Thelonious drew back, like sudden clarity had just reached him, and he stood back and allowed the girl to come up for air. She choked and spit out water, her chest heaving as she sucked in enormous breaths of air. 

Bellamy kneeled down beside her. “Listen – Echo, I can’t help you if you don’t talk.” 

She looked at him and in her eyes he saw some vague cloud of fear behind them. In an instant it was gone and she returned to stoicism, glaring at him heavily from behind strands of water-logged hair. 

“You killed my friend,” Clarke said, looking down at her with some mixture of anger and disgust. “You killed him. Why?” 

Echo breathed. “Your people killed my people,” she said. When quiet reigned she tried again. “Blood for blood.” 

“We had nothing to do with that,” Wells said. “You killed him for nothing.” 

“You are all the same,” Echo retorted. “You are all one of them.” 

“We’re not,” Monty protested. “We’re not all like them.” 

“I’m the last,” Echo said and she hung her head. “They’re all gone.” 

A struggle raged within Bellamy as he looked at the girl. His fingers dug into his hips and again he kneeled beside her and she looked at him and now he saw in her an opening. Some sadness that could not be articulated. He thought he understood it. 

“It’s okay,” he offered her a small smile, “We don’t have to kill each other.” 

He reached for her shoulder and felt his fingertips brush against the gentle fur of her coat and he felt it – felt an overcoming of the troubles that had led them here and a joy previously unknown to him had pulsed vibrantly in his heart when she gripped his arm, reaching behind her and pulling out a long silver knife and slashing his face clean across the cheek. He cried out and fell back in shock. She lashed out and grabbed Wells’s shirt, pulling him to her as she plunged the knife into his neck and the boy gurgled as his blood filled his lungs and poured over his mouth. He stumbled around in a circle, once, twice, and then fell back into the river, hands still clenched around the knife in his throat and thrashing vainly as he sunk beneath the rushing rapids. Clarke screamed in anger and tackled her, pulling her to the ground. She pulled a knife of her own from the sheath secured tightly around her belt and she stabbed at everything she could, her arm flying up before coming down on the girl again and again and both of them screamed and Bellamy looked away at the river – at the spot where Wells Jaha had collapsed into the river before being sucked under – until it was over, until the screaming stopped, and he looked at the bloody and unrecognizable mess of a girl that he had just before seemed so sure of, seemed so sure to share some of the burden that he carried with him every day of his life and he realized Clarke was still going. She was still going and she had to be stopped. 

He came up behind her as she ripped into the girl. He was hardly aware of his own bleeding face and the harsh stinging that accompanied the swell of blood dripping down and mixing with the blood of a boy he had shared meals and drink and camp with. He grasped lightly at Clarke’s shoulder and her stabbings became weaker and haphazard. She cried out and tossed the knife in fury; it soared and landed in the river with a plop. 

“She killed him,” Clarke sobbed, “She killed him.” 

“I know,” Bellamy whispered, pulling her to him. “I know.” He stroked her hair lightly as she cried and hardly noticed at his blood dripped into her hair, coiling around the stringy bands of hair until they merged with the reddened tips of her own making. The rest of them did not move. They stared at the mangled body and the blood on the ground and wondered at how they had gotten there. 

Echo’s body was dumped into the river. Harper patched up Bellamy’s cheek with a bandage recovered from the wagon and Murphy and Jasper stumbled into the woods dazedly in search of firewood. They were well into the night before they had a fire started, rubbing flint and steel to wood, and they worked on the last of their food without care for what the next day would bring nor the day after that. Nobody dared to look at Thelonious. Nobody deigned to talk. Nobody knew what to say. 

As Thelonious looked out beyond the glow of the fire into the territories masked in pitch blackness his mouth began to move and he spoke with an authority no less diminished than the night before or before that and at last it began anew. “A pretense of understanding the world without an apprehension of the glue that connects each and every event by its own necessary nature is impossible. The truth about the world is that there are many minds and many masters but only one chain realized in the vast expanse of temporality extending in both directions. Time is substance and the infinite is too and the structure that extends in every direction plays host to both. Count to a hundred and add one more, a thousand, a million, it makes no difference. One cannot fathom a world without them and yet they are unreachable by thought alone. The structure of things is such that influences extend both ways. Forward and backward. Perception is not essence but must invoke a dissolution of our own feeble musings that lead us astray. Intuit upon the world and see what I see and grasp in your hearts that there are things that move faster and in stranger ways than we know.” 

“Your son is dead,” Clarke remarked. 

“I know it,” Thelonious responded. And none slept. 

_1:6: Alie on fathers and sons_

After the dead have died the living must go on living. They found Jasper’s body a little way away from camp. In the cover of night he had hung himself from a sturdy tree branch with his belt and his pants had fallen a little so that they could see the tops of his soiled undergarments. Monty was in a state of despair. They talked of hunger, of the remaining food they had chewed through the previous night – or was it the night before? They spent half the day milling about their camp in confusion; the sleepiness and inertial haze that Bellamy had felt on their first day of traveling returned with a vengeance and he wondered if that’s what this was – vengeance. Revenge for a lifetime of living fast, of living loose and without regard for a world that would open up if only he had just done so. Revenge for being a failure and losing things that mattered most because he was stupid, because he wasn’t paying attention, because he wasn’t watching her when he should have been.  


Clarke sat numbly on a log and he took a seat beside her. They sat in a swirl of silence that was without comfort. He clasped his hands together and looked at the ground as he spoke. 

“We have to leave.” 

Clarke stayed quiet. 

“We can’t stay here.” 

“What do you propose?” 

“We leave. Take what we can and go.”

“These are my friends. I can’t leave them.” 

“We’re going to die out here.” 

“I won’t leave them.” 

He watched Thelonious amble around the camp anxiously. He was a man hot on his feet and he paced beside the river. He wanted to go and entreated anyone he could reach, explaining with a focused fury that they must leave soon and Bellamy could see the resistance beginning to falter, the collective will cracking. Soon they would march out into the wild again. 

“Something’s wrong with him,” Bellamy noted. 

Clarke eyed him sideways. “You think so?” 

“Don’t play games. What is the City of Light?” 

“I thought you didn’t care.” 

“I do now.”

Clarke shrugged. “It’s just a story we tell ourselves sometimes.” 

“A story?” 

“It wasn’t supposed to exist. But he found that thing.” 

“What is it?” 

“I’m not sure,” she shook her head. “Does it really matter now?” 

“Maybe,” he said. “He wasn’t like this before, was he?” 

Clarke stared at him. He continued, “Fairytales have their power because we give them power. The more we believe the stronger they get.” 

“Who told you that?” 

“Someone I knew a long time ago.” 

They were called to attention and implored to prepare themselves for the journey. Bellamy stood and eyed the bloodied knife that Clarke held fastened in her hands. 

“If we’re going to do something it has to be soon,” he said.

She smiled tiredly. “Don’t you know? I’m a killer now.” 

They stumbled through overgrowth and shallow streams and clambered up sharp inclines and trudged over soft earth and all the while Bellamy felt an unease creeping up inside him, spreading along the contours of his innards like thin putty made to fit any shape. They panted and wheezed and exhaustion wore them down and he found himself struggling next to Murphy who snorted shortly at him as they climbed a steep hill. 

“Getting tired, pretty boy?” 

“Me and you both.” 

Murphy laughed again and slapped Bellamy on the shoulder. “The hell you doing out here anyway?” he asked. 

Bellamy squinted at him. “You’re askin’ me this now?” 

Murphy shrugged. “Better now than never, you know what I’m sayin’?” 

“Well, what are you here for?” 

Murphy was quiet, sweat trailing down his face, carving a path through dirt and grime. “Got nowhere else to go,” he said at last.

“Remember what you said to Wells? Dying out here ain’t gonna do no good for anybody,” Bellamy said. He looked ahead to Thelonious who stepped unceasingly and without fatigue across land that had begun to turn barren. “You don’t have to follow him.” 

“Yeah? Who am I gonna follow?” Murphy bit back. “You?” 

Bellamy shook his head. 

“And what _about_ you?” Murphy pressed. “The fuck’s so good out here that you drop everything to follow a madman across the desert?” 

Bellamy walked without answering. “Look,” he said, “Whatever he got his hands on back at Arkadia did something to him.” 

“And?” 

“We put an end to it. Stop this here and now.” 

“And miss out on the City of Light?” 

Bellamy scrunched his face. “There is no City of Light.” 

Murphy smirked at him. “I seen what I seen. You’d do well to open your eyes.” 

Hunger reared at them and tore at their insides and they took frequent rests. They drank heartily from their canteens and water dribbled down their chins. The sun seemed to race across the sky and it dropped down towards the horizon like a sphere in freefall and disparate tufts of cloud sped across the blue band of the atmosphere and when night fell again they used the last of the wood gathered by the river to construct a new fire and Bellamy stared across the fire at Thelonious who met his eyes with a simple power. Tiny spots of light moved in celestial rotations above and beyond them. 

“What do you fear, Bellamy Blake?” 

Bellamy shifted back, startled at the utterance of his likeness. 

“I know you,” Thelonious said and his eyes fluttered shut and he breathed deeply. “I see you. In other worlds and other places I see all of you. Your grief and your fear and your cowardice.” 

“You ain’t God.” 

“No,” Thelonious smiled. “I am much more forgiving.” 

Bellamy glared across the shifting of the den. 

“And much more powerful.” 

“If that’s true why have we not yet found the City you brought us here to find?” 

“Because you don’t believe,” Thelonious answered. “A man cannot lead his flock to water if the flock is unwilling. You are unwilling to embrace and to accept. It is why you are here, after all.” 

“Ain’t much for stories,” Bellamy said bitterly. 

“No,” Thelonious said, “But is the course of one’s life not a story? Are the tales we weave along the tapestry of our own path’s choosing not in fact the totality of our experience? Go ahead, relate a fact, any fact, and tell us that it is not some piece of a larger puzzle and not part of a greater whole. Look upon that grand web extended in both space and time and cut out the worthless anecdotes and what are you left with? Everything meaningful that has happened to you has happened because of you. Every man and woman and relative and friend that has crossed your path and of whose you have crossed are but a function of your own sorrowful existence. What is a friend? A true friend? What of family? Of a father who cherishes the seed he nursed into being? Of a mother who looks upon the child she has brought into the world for the very first time? And what of the friend who takes on the struggle of this world for some other and who takes it gladly and without resentment? Do such things exist? Are there moments like these?” 

“You tell me.” 

“Indeed, there are. Just as there is loss. Of a boy who fears for his life and so takes it himself. Of one whose capacity to draw life from this earth is cut short and suffocates within himself. And of a young girl drowned in a river.”

Thelonious’s lips curved upward and ever wider and Bellamy bared his teeth. 

“I’m going to rip that fucking thing right out of you,” he said. 

“Always so quick to run,” Thelonious smoothed one hand over the other and they gleamed in the light of the fire. “Don’t you see there is nowhere left to go?” 

When they lay to sleep Bellamy felt someone shift close to him and tufts of blonde hair came to rest near his face. He breathed into it and smelt strawberries. He closed his eyes amidst the warmth radiating near his center and his sleep was dreamless. 

When they awoke in the dawn of early morning Harper and Monty were gone. The things they carried unmoved from where they had last been placed and the ground where they had last lain undisturbed by departing footprints. Their imprints in the sand were all that remained of them. Clarke called their names with an edge of desperation that Bellamy had even after all this time not yet heard and the desert returned her voice as if Nature itself were mocking her. She stomped around in circles, screaming their names until her voice was a hoarse whisper and then she slumped to the ground in defeat. 

Bellamy looked to Thelonious who sat, legs crossed and eyes closed and his voice was soft and light. “Where are they?” 

Thelonious did not move an inch. “Do you truly wish to know?” 

They left everything except for their canteens and journeyed out into the desert again. Thelonious led them and Clarke followed behind. Murphy and Bellamy brought up the pack and Bellamy leaned close to Murphy and spoke. “Where does he keep it?” 

Murphy looked at him like he was a man who had lost his wits. “Keep what?” 

“You remember, that thing he found in the desert. With that pattern on it. Where does he keep it?” 

Murphy shrugged. “I don’t watch the man.” 

“But you follow him.” 

“You want the damned thing so bad go get it yourself.” 

Bellamy flexed his hands and strode up to Clarke. He opened his mouth to speak but found that he could not say what he wanted, did not even know what he wanted to say. It was too late. Far too late. They had passed through desert and woodland and valleys and mountains and rivers and were days, maybe months from any settlement that was not beaten into the dust by the elements or by the hands of men themselves. Arkadia was a dream in a distant past. He struggled to recall a time before he had ridden into town and grasped only fragments, a collage of misremembered words and broken sentences, vague images that flitted through his mind like a moving picture or funny comics in the papers. His entire life was a melted painting. A story that could not be told.  
Now they would melt in the desert heat. The stars fell at night and in the daytime too one eye in the sky eyes on the inside screams shouts and God Himself plucking away eroding at the seams everything has gone and everything must go. 

“You will face a metaphysics,” the man said and he poured over imaginary books and imaginary maps and peered through his own eye at an astral sky. 

“Breathe.” 

Back hard against the ground and bodies moving in a circular fashion above him like a wheel that spins forever. Movement that neither stopped nor slowed. Things pass. They come to be and they die away. Whatever beside remains? 

“C’mon, breathe.” 

Love? He wondered what it might be like to love. He thought of a mother’s love. A father’s. Does it too weaken with Time? Or is it sturdy and sharp like a tree branch that lives for centuries? He thought he loved, once, maybe. He thought maybe he could love again. The sweet scent of strawberries in an empty land. 

“Bellamy.” 

The world attaches. It digs into the swirling wax of memory. It follows him like a ghost. He has opinions, beliefs, precarious judgements formulated over a lifetime of travel. He is besotted with aggrievement. He knows that if there is one thing he can love it is anger. 

“You put your finger right here. See? Hold it to the trigger. Against your shoulder like this.” 

He thinks about other places and other worlds. He marvels at the possibility that brought him to this exact world in this exact place at this exact time. He remembers beds and flowers, desks and chairs. Graves. He knows there is one with his name on it. One that is waiting for him. He thinks that if the Infinite and Time are real then Place must be too. He thinks it makes no difference that there are other worlds because all they share is one thing. They are each in their proper Place, no matter where that is.

“How much farther?” 

“Not long now.” 

He resists the temptation of Fate. He feels it dragging at him, pulling him deeper into the whirlpool of malaise. It is what killed him before. It will kill him again. 

“Subject status: almost living.” 

He has walked these lands before. For a moment he remembers everything that will come to pass and he reaches out towards a fading light. For a moment he can break the cycle. 

“Cycles of time, of movement, of fate.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“It’s not about what you want.” 

Everything is circular, he understands. Prime movement demands it. The origin of things does not rest in this world alone. 

“What do you want, Bellamy?” she asks. “Why did you say yes to me?” 

“I thought I could break the cycle,” he admits. “But I walked into it again.” 

She reaches up to palm his cheek and he closes his eyes. He feels her come close, his lips tingle. Murphy stumbles out into the desert night and does not return again. 

“It’s just us now,” she whispers and he feels her breath hot on his face. 

"It doesn’t matter,” he says, “She’s still here with us.” 

“She’ll always be with you,” she draws back and they stare at each other in the darkness. 

It is pain unlike any he has felt. There is something horrific slinking in the recess of his mind and he feels a single thought – a memory – clawing at him from below, tearing at him and he feels his resolve slipping. There is something very still, a cloud of grey and white that hovers over him and he can hear it, irrevocably and inextricably linked to himself. He begins to cry. 

“How do I stop her?” 

“Only you can stop yourself.” 

“I love you.”

“Not yet.” 

He begins to apprehend the gravity of what has occurred and what will occur. He throws his head back and howls into the night and the sound of him travels far and wide, over deep ravines and arroyos and fields of blooming flora on a heady summer day past the rushing of a river. It is why he likes America. There is so much uncontested space. 

She takes his face in her hands and he looks to her in resignation. 

“What am I to do?” 

“What you always have.” 

He nods and begins to fade, his vision dissolving into a twisted oozing cloud of shapes and colors. He can see the man, now a woman, smiling beside him, her eyes boring into his and the shine of the metallic chip embedded into her arm, its symbol shining infinitely in his final moments. 

He turns to the girl in front of him, her hands still placed gently on both sides of his face and he cannot help the fresh flow of tears. She leans to him so that her lips brush faintly against his. 

“May we meet again,” she whispers.

“May we meet again," he whispers back. 

He came to himself in a brilliant blue flash of light. He sat up, groaning, and looked about him. He was surrounded on all sides by desert that rolled on to the horizon. He lightly touched the hat atop his head and with a deep sigh stood to his feet. He wobbled, holding his arms out to find his balance and once he had steadied himself he dragged his feet forward. Once, twice, again, and again. He found his bearings and began to move. 

Dusted boots thudded across a desert landscape.


End file.
